That’s gotta be one of the biggest lies about us.

AntiSemitism? Does it say Semitism or Judaism? There is a difference between the Jewish RELIGION and the Semite ETHNICITY!

To criticize one does not automatically make you criticize the other.

There are plenty of Semites who are not members of the Jewish religions.

There are plenty of members of Judaism who are not Semites.

So how is being critical of Judaism and Zionism AntiSemitic?

When someone is called a racist for opposing, not a race, but a religion, its just plain sick.

Don’t accuse people of being AntiSemites, if they are only trying to convert Jews.

AntiSemites want to kill Semites. AntiSemites hate Semites, for no other reason except that they were born Semites.

Judaism, however is a religion, not an ethnicity. Judaism is something you can join, or leave. Its not something you are born a part of.

We are not born Catholic, we must be baptised, and/or convert.

Just the same as Catholicism is not an ethnicity, neither is Judaism.

I hope that clears it up.

On the issue of fostering a “middle ground” — I’m not suggesting that people need to abandon views that they think critical to the health of the Church. Of course there will be widespread disagreement on what those are, and I’m under no illusions about our being able to solve everything with a simple widespread appeal for more understanding. It’s just that I sometimes note longstanding traditionalists being standoffish or openly contemptuous of what you might call half-traditional Catholics, as if these people are quasi-traitors to the cause, or wolves in sheep’s skin. This is a bad way to look at things. By all means, continue to press those views that you think most important on the unconvinced or the half-convinced, but recognize that the existence of a traditional middle-group (if you will) is a hopeful sign, not a bad one; it shows that at least some traditional causes are reaching a wider group of people. And everyone should be prepared to be less tenacious about those views that they themselves recognize as being less important.

Okay, I’ll tone down the rhetoric a bit. Yes, I want traditionalism to have a greater impact on the Church. But even more so, I hold that, properly speaking, I want Tradition to triumph. Properly, a traditional Catholic is not an adherent of a particular stripe of Catholicism, an adherence that has more or less impact on the Church. Rather, I hold that a traditional Catholic is one on whom the Church, via Tradition, has greater impact. I really do want most of the Church to adopt again the things that traditionalists have been defending. So I am quite wary of shearing some things away in order to have greater influence.

But our topic here is precisely the fact that there’s a great deal of controversy concerning precisely what is “core” to traditionalism and what not. One person’s “impediment to greater impact in the furtherance of our goals” is another person’s “selling out part and parcel of our raison d’etre.” I’d be willing to let the validity of Archbishop Lefebvre’s excommunication be known only to Mgr. L. and God until the Last Judgment, provided the SSPX get itself regularized. The SSPXers apparently want the rescinding of the excommunication as a precondition to regularization.

Obviously the errors of Protestantism, modernism and all other evil movements, should be refuted, but the question is whether in their eagerness to refute heresy the Traditionlists are rejecting things that should be areas of agreement. Every heretic is right about some things.

I just think we need to be really careful about claiming that any particular belief is in keeping with Church teachings prior to Vatican II, even though nobody really held that view before Vatican II, just because of a perceived harmony of “principles.”

Well, I think that it would be regrettable for anyone to refuse to break bread with someone else over these things. So long as we avoid near occasions of sin for ourselves and undue risk of scandal for others, we should be willing to break bread with anyone, it seems. Our Lord did so with prostitutes and Pharisees alike, when the latter let him. As Clara notes, that seems to be a problem coming from the opposite direction — against traditionalists — as well. I think that by relegating the “old guard” to the “fever swamps” and the “extreme fringe,” there is the risk of violating charity on that end. Of course, charity can still go hand in hand with candor and vigorous debate, which is what we’re all attempting here.

Part of the impetus for my post is the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center recently published a list of twelve traditionalist Catholic organizations and periodicals it deemed “extremist, anti-semitic, racist,” etc. Some of the groups I do not keep up with and may publish junk, for all I know. For others that I have read (including seven in my list above), this is simple slander and obfuscation. The Left is very adept at practicing its own form of “McCarthyism,” usually by branding its opponents as McCarthyites! And intolerance against Christians is often rationalized on the basis that Christians are intolerant.

I think that for at least some traditionalists, the list above is part not of liturgical traditionalism, but of a consistent resistance to the persistent errors of Protestantism, the Enlightenment, and Modernism. I don’t think that the *principles* lying behind the 17+ things I’ve enumerated would have been so strange to Catholics prior to Vatican II. I know some traditionalists who view the undermining of “Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus” as the root and cause of the liturgical crisis, and ultimately more important than it. Decades before Vatican II, Fr. Feeney wrote, “And by the way, when speaking of how to pray, dogmas come first, not liturgies.” That’s the necessary corollary of “lex orandi, lex credendi” — the belief is actually the thing being attacked by the liturgical deformation, hence the Faith is more important than the liturgy that serves it. For whatever that’s worth.

And JSP reminds me of some stuff I forgot in my list: Christmas really was on December 25th, Sts. Christopher and George really existed, the Fourteen Holy Helpers should be restored to their due prominence, the child martyrs (like Little St. Hugh of Lincoln) should have their cult restored, the pieces of the True Cross are real, the Turn Shroud is real, etc.

Obviously a recent convert like me is not likely to be a classic traditionalist. (In addition, if it’s true that people tend to separate out into sects by personality type — a theory with significant limitations, I think, but still — then I’m pretty sure I don’t have the classic “trad” personality. My mother used to laugh that I was in a state of conflict since I had a liberal personality and conservative views.) The only items on your list that I’d more or less dismiss would be 2, 12 and 14. But there’s nary an item there that I wouldn’t want to qualify, and in some cases qualify heavily. They all seem to me to contain at least a kernal of good insight, but often this is taken (in my mind) to an unfortunate extreme, thus neglecting other relevant truths. Such is the tendency of a reactionary movement.

Let’s suppose it’s true that the Latin Mass is now beginning to attract an influx of younger people and converts who don’t have the same pre-Vatican II connections to Traditionalism. A lot may hinge, then, on the ability of these different kinds of Latin Mass supporters to unite peacefully around the goal that presumably should be the most important to all of them, namely, preservation of the Latin Mass and other traditional devotions, and a resurgance of Catholic orthodoxy. On the side of the newer folks, this might require a measure of tolerance and open-mindedness about the views of the old guard. Some of their ideas are certain to seem strange/crazy to newcomers, but the shock or incredulity should be held in check. It takes a certain amount of humility is required to recognize that often one simply has untrained sensibilities that make it difficult to understand the purpose or wisdom behind a particular practice or view.

But some flexibility will be required from the other side as well, and this can be difficult since longstanding Traditionalists do have the sort of defensive attitude that is so common among members of a beleaguered minority group (or sect?). Many of the items on your list may seem to people fairly indispensable for revitalizing the Church, but others pretty clearly are not. As others on this thread have noted, Traditionalists are not pure and unfiltered mirrors of the Church before Vatican II; they have been affected by other historical developments that have no special relationship to eternal truth. So, views about politics or economics can surely be secondary to more central liturgical or doctrinal issues. We should be able to break bread with people who admire MLK or Jefferson or (yes, I’m going to say it) John Paul II. Possibly some room could even be made for people who have reservations about homeschooling. :-)

So I guess I would suggest that, in looking at this list and deciding which items you agree with, it would be well for each of us to consider also which seem the most important. Presumably we want the Latin Mass (and other practices that are now fairly distinctive to Latin Massgoers) to become more “mainstream” in the sense of bringing its graces to a much larger body of Catholics. If that is to happen, it will be necessary to make the transition from a sect-type mentality

You wrote a great post. I was tempted to chime in at several times - especially in response to Johnboy’s evil clone.

But perhaps it’s due to the Lenten Season, but I can’t get the desire and passion to fight Novus Ordinarians.

Me personally, I buy into Catholic traditionalism 100%. I say why not?

Those who laugh at biblical Creationism only do so because 12 years of Judeo-Masonic public schools or modernist comprised parochial schools have indoctrinated them to have such a reaction.

The biblical timeline works out perfectly — nothing with God happens by coincidence — each major epoch in Salvation history had about 2000 years in between.

Where does the Novus Ordinarian skepticism end?

Those who say a mature faith can doubt things like the whether or not Jesus Christ was actually born on December 25th or not and still be a good Catholic are fools. Eventually this type of thinking leads to greater doubt and eventual apostasy. Just because it hasn’t happened to you means nothing.

In reality it’s so stupid to question any article, no matter how small, of our Sacred Tradition. For instance, with regard to December 25th, are we to suppose that somewhere in the Apostolic Succession, the date of Jesus’ birth was not passed on correctly? Certainly, Mary and the Apostles knew this date. ((Has anyone out there every met a mother who didn’t know the birth date of their child?)) If they knew it, then of course the Church knows it. It’s no coincidence that Jesus was born at the height of Paganism in the world and on the darkest day of the year — there are no coincidences with God.

So, yes, I believe in it all — Christmas Day, Sts. Christopher and George, Creationism, even geo-centrism — I can’t prove or disprove it either way, so I believe in that too – if for no other reason than to tick off the Novus Ordinarians and I’ll teach it to my homeschooled kids just to tick off our Judeo-Masonic masters.

I think that a lot of traditionalists, whose communities and identity were forged back before the Indult, lament the fragmentation into sects. One of my particular objections to the Saint Pius X Society is that they behave as though they were the magisterium of the traditionalists. Sometimes you would think that they alone were justified in standing up to the Novus Ordo hierarchy and that if you don’t stand with them, then you should fall. Also, the Remnant newspaper and Catholic Family News sometimes encourage the SSPXers and independent chapel people to reject practically anything the Vatican offers. Yes, that is sectarian behavior. But that is getting away from my list of non-liturgical, non-jurisdictional points.

Secondly, I think that outright hatred of Jews is not common *among the people I am citing.* In those publications, there is no racial hatred of Jews. Zeal for their conversion, yes; racial hatred, no. I have read actual, honest-to-goodness neo-Nazi writings, and these Catholics don’t deal in that. Now, these Catholics may let their antipathy toward Judaism affect their analysis of current events somewhat. There does seem to be immediate suspicion of Israeli interests, for instance. However, they do have some rationale — the King David Hotel bombings, Deir Yassin, the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, etc. That is a very bad part of the world, and I don’t think anyone has their hands clean, except for the local Christians (in the main).

John L., I think that you are right in claiming that the “isolationism” of Fr. Charles Coughlin and the anticommunism of Sen. McCarthy fed into the traditionalist movement. Unfortunately for your theory, it has subsequently been revealed just how honeycombed with Communists the New Deal administration really was. I think that the historian Tom Fleming wrote a book, “The New Dealers’ War,” revealing how the Roosevelt administration manipulated the war for non-military reasons. In any case, I don’t know anyone at those publications who has stated that he would have preferred an Axis victory. They all condemn Naziism, Fascism, and Japanese imperialism. The question is if the Allied cause and methods were simply and absolutely pure. I think it is fair to say “no.” I do think that you agree here — the reductio ad Hitlerum does not justify Dresden, Hiroshima, Katyn, and the betrayals of Yalta.

Nevertheless, John L., I think that you have made some very wise statements about the sociological and historical development of the traditionalist movement. While I think we disagree about some facts, I think that you frame your aspirations correctly — a winnowing is necessary, not a wholesale rejection of traditionalism. The Indult and the blogosphere may mean the development of a younger, more liturgically oriented traditionalism that does not immediately “buy into” all of the positions of the older movement.

Pfui, I do think that the traditionalist groups I have mentioned in my list do attribute some of the actual planning to human organizations. Certainly, Satan and his angels are behind the “City of Man.” Nevertheless, many traditionalists do in fact that Satan “outsources” some of the work to his human minions. For instance, Fr. Fahey talked about an “organized naturalism” that opposed itself to the Church, which is “organized supernaturalism.” Fahey identified the Jewish nation and the Masonic Lodge as the primary naturalistic forces in the world, though with the return of militant Islam we might want to say they are the two forces in *western civilization.* William Thomas Walsh is popular among trads, and his book “Philip II” from Tan identifies a Protestant conspiracy behind the Reformation. Many trads of the stripe I’ve mentioned are fans of Abbe Barruel, who claimed that Adam “Spartacus” Weishaupt’s Illuminati was behind the French Revolution. Plus, the current head of the John Birch Society is a traditionalist Catholic, and the JBS does deal in human conspiracies.